Argo AI, a Pittsburgh startup, has sold a majority share of their company to Ford Motor Co. which has agreed to invest $1 billion over a five-year schedule but will immediately become the majority shareholder. Both companies declined to disclose further details.

The Association for Advancing Automation (A3) has announced a call for startup companies in robotics, machine vision and motion control for its Automate Launch Pad Competition. The competition will be held at the Automate 2017 Show and Conference in Chicago, Illinois on April 5, 2017. The presenting sponsor of the competition is GE. The event is co-produced with Silicon Valley Robotics.

2016 was a busy and abundant year for seed, crowd, series A,B,C,D and VC funding of robotics-related startups. 128 companies got funded, some multiple times. $1.95 billion, 50% more than 2015 which was also a phenomenal year with over $1.32 billion funded.

The robotics industry is maturing. The quality of startups in particular has really changed over the last 2-3 years, and this is backed up by the increasing investment levels, with over $1 billion invested in robotics in 2015. The scope of market areas that we are now seeing robotics startups in is also changing. There are now social robots for health and education, robots doing service tasks in hospitality, retail, logistics, consumer robots tackling garden and maintenance tasks. There are also new industrial, manufacturing and inspection robots, plus new sensor, software and robotics infrastructure opportunities.

We need you! Silicon Valley Robotics and Robohub have just launched the 2016 Robot Launch global online startup competition. Pitch your robotics startup online to an audience of top VCs, investors and experts, with live finals in Silicon Valley. Entries close August 15.

In previous Robot Launch competitions we’ve had hundreds of entries from more than 20 countries around the world. Our finalists have also reached the finals of major startup competitions like Tech Crunch Disrupt, and gone on to raise millions of dollars of funding making strong industry partnerships, such as working with Siemens Frontier Program.

It’s an exciting time to have a startup in robotics. The European startup ecosystem is improving year-after-year and provides networking, mentoring and funding opportunities. The aim is to build a vibrant startup scene capable of rivaling the main hubs around the world. And with a number of success stories over the past year, this could happen soon.